The Hindu : Jailbreak at Palayamkottai, fatal fall for fleeing prisoner

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 21, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

Jailbreak at Palayamkottai, fatal fall for fleeing prisoner

By Our Staff Reporter

TIRUNELVELI DEC. 20. Two life convicts and an undertrial escaped from the Palayamkottai Central Prison in the wee hours today. The attempt by three other life convicts to flee was foiled.

One of the rearrested prisoners, who sustained a head injury as he fell from the 14-foot wall, died in the evening.

Following the prison escape, Mathivaanan and Backiyanathan, assistant jailers; Dharmalingam and Esakki, chief warders; Radhakrishnan, Dhakshinamurthy, Dharmeswaran, Maharajan, Muthuraja and Chellaiah, all warders, have been placed under suspension. Chief warders Dhanapaul Devaram and Sikkandar Basha and warders Sankarasubbu and Kandasamy are facing "departmental action".

The City Police Commissioner, K. Nandabalan, said seven special teams were formed to nab the escapees. All the police stations in Tirunelveli, Tuticorin and Kanyakumari districts were put on high alert.

Sniffer dogs ran up to the Thiruvananthapuram Road from the place where the escapees jumped near the outer wall of the prison, and stopped abruptly without any clue.

The escapees are P. Vitty alias Samraj (32) of Manakaavalampillai Nagar near Palayamkottai, S. Murthy (20) of Neduvilai near Nanguneri, both life convicts in murder cases, and S. Charles (20) of Mittaadhaarkulam near Radhapuram, arrested in a theft case. The rearrested inmates are C. Venkatesh (30) and K. Kumar alias Sivakumar (23), both hailing from Mela Seval, near here and convicted in a murder case, and M. Gopalakrishnan (34) of Chettivilai near Agastheeswaram in Kanyakumari district.

All the six inmates, who had been lodged in a cell in the tail-end of a building in the central part of the prison, made a hole in their room with a knife after removing bricks around 2.30 a.m. When the convict warder, Sankar, tried to nab them, they gagged his mouth with old clothes and tied him with a rope.

After scaling two nine-foot high protective walls, the prisoners, using their bedsheets as a rope, climbed the 14-foot high outer wall, which has been fortified with live electric wires. They used the bed-sheet to protect themselves against being electrocuted.

While Samraj, Murthy and Charles scaled the wall to take a vehicle on the Thiruvananthapuram High Road, Kumar suffered a shock and fell down, sustaining severe injuries in the head. Meanwhile, the warders, who saw the prisoners escaping, alerted others and nabbed Venkatesh and Gopalakrishnan after a brief scuffle. Suresh alias Thirumalai Nambi, a warder, received injuries in the stomach. Kumar was admitted to the hospital on the prison premises. As his condition worsened in the evening, Kumar was rushed to the Tirunelveli Medical College Hospital, where he died.

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